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I got a bit of a shock today. On the daily inspection of the chillis, there was a hint of colour on a chilli or two on both types! Yippee!

Which is a relief, as all weekend I’d been trying on and off to find a website that told me just how long it took until chillis started to ripen. The only sites I found all had pictures from around October time with ripe chillis, and I was starting to think that I might have to wait that long! NNNnooooooooooo!!

I can’t work out if it’s the weather today, or the long conversation I had with them yesterday that’s done the trick, but I’m not complaining! But there is a little concern with the plants though. All this hot weather is, I think, causing a few issues with flowering. I understand that the plants need coolish nights to set flowers, but for a lot of nights lately the temperature in the house seems to stay well about 20 to 25 degrees. Great for sleeping too!

But I guess I won’t have to wait too long now the scary part. Finding out just how hot they are! Gulp!

Once again it’s been a while since the last chilli update… But here they are! The latest pics.

And damn! They’re starting to look good enough to eat! No idea when the Habeneros will start to change colour, and not sure how big the Ring of Fire’s will get, or when they’ll ripen either, but we’ll see.

I just hope they’re getting enough sun on the not so sunny window sills. I’ve been really surprised at just how prolific the Ring of Fires have been given that they’re in pots that are really too small for them, and that has obviously stunted their growth a bit, but given the size the Habeneros have got to, that’s maybe not a bad thing! Next time though, maybe a pot size somewhere in between would be better.

And it’s maybe a good thing that the hundreds of flowers on the Habeneros have not all managed to pollentate through the “shake that plant” pollenation method, else we’d have enough to feed a whole Carribean community! Amazing amounts of flowers.

All looks good for a full production run one day though.

Another stage of development down for the babies. Both of the big chilli plants had their first flowers open today. I suspect that the blooms still have a fair bit of expanding to do until they reach their full size, but exciting none the less. And it looks like there are many, many, many more getting ready to appear too. Far too many for me to be bothered to count at this stage! Yum, yum!

I was reading today that chilli flowers come out in a bit of a pattern/progession. One opens, then 2, then 4 etc until presumably some limit is reached. I’ll be interested to see if that’s actually true.

Now I just have to work out how/when to pollinate them by either giving the plant a good shake or rubbing the inside of the flowers gently with something. Gulp!

When I was doing the daily check on the chilli plants on Friday, I noticed something new appearing at the top of them. I suspect that this has to be the start of the flowers! Yippee! And best of all, it looks like there are quite a number of them starting to sprout. Now all I have to do is to work out exactly when to try to pollenate them. Hmmm.

Another thing that I’ve learnt about chilli plants is that they like doing pushups. Well, one pushup a day really. Either that or they go to sleep. Their leaves all sag and droop down sometime during the early evening, and by morning they are all back up spread wide. I’m not sure what time in the morning, but it must be early. It’s so noticable that even Bec worked it out!

It’s been a while since I updated you on the chilli plantation. I’m sure you’re all waiting with bated breath…

Well, I left the little ones at work while we went on holiday. Not a good move when it’s a hot office, and the Easter break! Apparently there was only shrivelled up things when the crew got back to work. But they managed to revive some, and they have managed to stay alive so far. But not growing too fast since. Although I’ve come to suspect that they really don’t like the little peat pots they are in, for some reason.

The two plants that I left at home, as I had no room left to take them to work, surprisingly, have started to flourish. I don’t get it, but I’m happy about it! The ones in the white pot in the photos are the ones left at home, the 2 little ones are the ones that had a holiday at work while we did.

This weekend’s job is to repot them all. The big ones need a bit more room already, and I want to see if some of the little ones decide to take off in a bigger pot. We’ll see.

The time has come tomorrow to say goodbye to some of the chilli plants. They’ve finally got to the stage that they are big enough to leave the house and make their way in the big wide world. And we really don’t have enough room for them all.

Luckily there seems no end to the households that want one, and it’s good to know they will go to good homes.

Packing them up to move house was a pain, but I hope it will be worth it.

The hardest part is working out which of them to keep!

What a difference a week makes. After being so happy last week that one little plant had popped it’s head up, now I’ve got a chilli forest on the go! Yippee! And as an added bonus, the other type of chilli seeds have decided to start popping up too, just when I’d written them off completely. Now I just have to work out when to upgrade them into larger pots…

Looks like my thumbs may have a little green in them after all! Some of the chilli seeds have poked their heads up in the last couple of days. I was expecting either no action for a long while, or no action at all, after reading a few sites that suggested that the seeds need a very high temperature, and often a long time to germinate. But I’m not complaining!

Well, it’s been a bit of an agricultural weekend. The state of the twigs and weeds in the pots out the front door just got too much to bear, and so we finally decided to sort it. New plants all round, including quite a few bulbs, some red flowery things, a couple of herbs, and some other stuff that will hopefully be blue flowers in the end. I know that the herbs are Rosemary and Thyme, but the others are a bit of a mystery at this stage. You can tell that I really know my plants, huh?

But the big excitement was planting chilli seeds! Ring of Fire and Habanero variants. I suspect that it’s not too hard to work out what the heat value of them might be! So I have a seed tray full of seeds, and now I just have to wait and see if any of them sprout. Please, please, please! I let you know how they get on.